James, Henry creator Author text 2001 Wordsworth Classic 2001 monographic eng

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xxi, 151 p. : 4.92 x 0.35 x 7.87 inches Henry James Introduction and Notes by Ian F.A. Bell. Professor of English Literature. University of Keele. Washington Square marks the culmination of James's apprentice period as a novelist. With sharply focused attention upon just four principal characters, James provides an acute analysis of middle-class manners and behaviour in the New York of the 1870s, a period of great change in the life of the city. This change is explored through the device of setting the novel's action during the 1840s, similarly a period of considerable turbulence as the United States experienced the onset of rapid commercial and industrial expansion. Through the relationships between Austin Sloper, a celebrated physician, and his sister Lavinia Penniman, his daughter Catherine, and Catherine's suitor, Morris Townsend, James observes the contemporary scene as a site of competing styles and performances where authentic expression cannot be articulated or is subject to suppression. 813.4 JAM KCU 240930 20240930131736.0 eng